A vast majority of core investment by cities does not include climate measures, even measures that make financial sense without subsidies or outside investments. Most cities today continue to construct energy-hogging infrastructure, build roads without transit and pedestrian considerations, plan development that creates long commutes, dispose of waste without utilizing it as a power source, and ignore distributed generation and renewable energy options. When they make these oversights, they constrain themselves to a future of wasted energy and high GHG emissions for decades to come. These investments could become missed opportunities. The reasons these opportunities are missed are many, however, ICLEI has found in its years of experience with Indian municipalities it is not due to a lack of feasible options but mostly due to lack of awareness, technical know how and support.

Fast growing Indian cities have potentially numerous opportunities to showcase clean development through the JNNURM activities. The three-year APP Project targets these opportunities by helping one or two cities to implement 15 clean development measures through 10 interventions including technical and implementation support. Through the Urban Climate Project ICLEI-SA with support from NIUA; aims to assist the city implement infrastructure projects (through technical and to some extent financial support) by including cleaner and efficient technologies and also model GHG deflections to showcase benefits.